Printing systems, including inkjet printers, are well known in the art. Inkjet technology enables the printing of text and images by depositing very small droplets of ink onto a print medium, such as paper. Inkjet printheads are typically secured to a scanning carriage that traverses the print medium in a direction transverse to the direction of travel of the print media through the printer. Each printhead includes multiple tiny ink ejection elements formed in a substrate that are selectively “fired” by electrical signals, causing droplets of ink to be ejected in a controlled fashion onto the print medium.
Inkjet printers typically utilize replaceable ink supplies, which may be either integral with the printheads (in the form of “print cartridges”), or separate from the printheads (sometimes referred to as “separate ink and silicon”). When the printheads are integral with the ink supplies, the printheads are replaced each time new ink supplies are installed in the printer. When separate from the replaceable ink supplies, the printheads may be permanent or semi-permanent, with an ink delivery system routing ink from the supplies to the printheads. Since printheads are relatively expensive, “separate ink and silicon” configurations typically allow for a lower total cost of printer ownership.
If permanent or semi-permanent printheads are used, the replaceable ink supplies may be located remotely from the printheads and off the scanning carriage (referred to as “off-axis”). Locating the ink supplies off-axis reduces the scanning carriage mass and swept volume, which typically allows for mechanically simpler and more compact printer systems.
Printers are commonplace in business settings, and have long been used to print office documents. More recently, printers have become a common accessory to home computers. As printers become less expensive and more capable, a general trend has been for printers to increasingly move into new areas where the users are less familiar with business machines and may not be technically savvy. For example, a grandparent with no previous familiarity with computer equipment may now acquire a printer for use with a digital camera for printing vacation snapshots.
Individuals who have used printers or other office equipment for many years are generally familiar with the appearance of the printer consumables and with the installation procedures, and are therefore not intimidated by the prospect of having to periodically replace the consumables. In some of the newer printer markets, however, such as printers for use with point-and-shoot digital cameras, unfamiliarity with replacement procedures and the unfriendly, industrial appearance of the consumables can be impediments to adoption of the technology.
Other trends that can make maintaining a printer a daunting task for an unsophisticated user include the use of an increasing number of different ink colors for printing photographs, and the use of separate ink supplies for each ink color. Early color printers typically used three primary colors and black for printing color images; newer photograph-quality printers may use six or more ink colors to provide an improved image quality. Many earlier color printers utilized a single cartridge to contain all three of the primary color inks; separate ink supplies for each color are generally perceived to provide greater value since there is less potential for unutilized ink. A printer user may thus need to maintain a printer with six or more separate ink supplies.
There is thus a need for replaceable printing consumable with features facilitating intuitive installation by a user.